Trixy: A Novel by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

Abstract

Reviewed by: Trixy: A Novel by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Steven Mollmann Trixy: A Novel. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. Edited by Emily E. VanDette. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2019. liv + 239 pp. $21.95 paper/e-book. Originally published in 1904, Trixy is an antivivisection novel by the activist Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. Aside from print-on-demand editions, this is the first publication of the novel since 1905. In this new edition, editor Emily E. VanDette reprints the complete text with a forty-page introduction, seven pages of endnotes, and contextual materials. Trixy is of a piece with other antivivisection novels of the era, pitting a sympathetic female protagonist against a harsh male vivisector and strongly emphasizing dogs in particular as a victim of vivisection. In this case, the sympathetic Miriam Lauriat is wooed by the accomplished young doctor Olin Steele, who, unbeknownst to her, is a vivisector. At the same time, Miriam makes the acquaintance of a young man named Dan and his performing dog, Trixy, who is snatched in order to be made an experimental subject in Steele's laboratory. Like many other antivivisection novels Trixy associates the danger of vivisection with a danger to women. The threat Steele poses to Miriam is not physical danger but, rather, his possessive attitude toward women. Although as a young trainee he could not bear to see an animal experimented upon, he has by the novel's present time dissected the brains of fifty dogs in his search for the physiological cause of love and concluded that love doesn't exist. He believes that the weak must be sacrificed to the strong and that women must therefore be gained by force. Steele loves Miriam, but his clinical training has destroyed his capacity to understand his feelings. Phelps's novel thus argues that vivisection is dangerous because of the harm it causes not only to innocent animals but also to the vivisector. While this argument is not uncommon, Phelps's emphasis on misogyny and her exploration of the continuity between the animal and the human distinguish her approach within the convention. As a result, the republication of Trixy will be of interest to scholars of feminist activism as well as scientific ethics. VanDette's introduction demonstrates how the novel fits into Phelps's career as a writer-activist, tracing it back to "The Tenth of January," her 1868 fictionalized account of a tragic mill fire. Phelps appealed to her audience by connecting conservative ideas about morality, gender, family, and class to a more modern emphasis on animal identity. VanDette also provides a strong introduction to the American antivivisection movement, drawing attention to its relationship to the traditional humane movement whose focus was reforming [End Page 123] ostensibly working-class attitudes toward children and animals, and whose supporters included vivisectors seeking to improve their images. Antivivisection sought to regulate elite professional practices, and drew new fire as a result. These competing agendas created tension within the movement, and VanDette unpacks how Phelps's novel negotiates these differences. The introduction may be especially useful for readers less familiar with Phelps's career or the American antivivisection movement. While VanDette draws connections to Phelps's other antivivisection fiction, I wanted a clearer sense of the novel's place in the broader context of antivivisection fiction. I found that having seven pages of notes at the end of the book with no in-text indicators frustrating. While this practice is commonplace in critical and scholarly editions, because it makes the text identical to the original, and while some readers may welcome an undisrupted experience, I prefer knowing I can find more information on something at the back of a scholarly edition to hoping the editor chose to annotate it; and, conversely, I like an indication that something I may not register as important is noteworthy at the time I should be noting it. Finally, the book contains about seventy pages of other antivivisection materials from the time the novel was first published: Senator George Graham Vest's 1855 "Eulogy of the Dog" speech; Mark Twain's "A Dog's Tale" (1903); Phelps's own 1902 address to the Massachusetts legislature appealing for increased regulation of vivisection; and...